7-1-16
Dear Rose,
I won’t
lie, the next few weeks will suck. You don’t know this yet, but you won’t sleep
for the next two days and you will feel terrible. This is your gut telling you
to get out of the situation. You won’t do it at first, but after stewing for a
few weeks and talking to your “twin” Jen, you will break free. It will take time
to recover. While you will get heartbroken in the future, I hope and pray this
is the only time you will ever get your mind broken. You will get through it! Don’t
beat yourself up when it takes time to heal! You’ve given six months of your
life to someone who has sucked you into his warped way of thinking. It will be
years before you go to Mass without either feeling guilty because your shirt is
“too low cut” or doing it on purpose out of defiance. But these years will
pass.
This isn’t
the only challenge you will go through in the coming years. You will meet more
Mr. Collinses. Someone you hoped would be a Darcy will turn out to be a Wickam
of the vilest sort. And it’s not only in romantic relationships that you will
struggle.
In less
than two months, you will be forced to make an excruciating decision. You will
know what you have to do, and will do it, but it will rip your heart out. The
months after that will be miserable. You will feel close to ok, only to have a
friend betray you, or a carpet ripped out from under your feet. You will spend
countless hours trapped in your parents’ house wanting to die. It won’t be all
bad, however! You will be come much closer to Helen and John. Helen will become
one of your best friends. She was a little kid when you left for college and
now you’ll get to know her as a young adult. Eventually, you will get a job. Not
a good one – but you will enjoy it. And, in the end, this experience will lead
you to a career that you love.
Let me
tell you a little more about the next few years. After ten months in the US,
you will move back to Hungary. While teaching on the eastern side of the
country, you will fall in love – with teaching. The next summer, you will,
willingly, move back to the US for grad school. Two years later, you will end
up in CHINA. The next summer, you will take the Trans-Mongolian Railway from
Beijing to Russia. After that, I can’t tell you; I haven’t lived it yet!
These
years won’t be easy either. You will make and lose friends. You will be
betrayed and maligned by someone you trusted. But you will make it!
Five
years to the day after that airport meeting, you will walk down the street in
Ulan Bator, Mongolia, almost crying as you mentally compose this letter. None
of this would have happened if you had tried to make that relationship work. In
the end, you probably would have gotten your heart broken along with your mind.
(For future reference, if the idea of kissing someone makes you feel
ill, you probably should date them!)
Today,
you are adventurous, happy, living a full life, and FREE. There might be a
relationship in your future, but, for now, you are too busy living your life to
mind being single.
I’m
going to close now before the tears escape the corners of my eyes and the
Mongolian family in my cabin on the train think I’m nuts. I am so proud of all
you/I have accomplished and I can’t wait to see what’s next!
I’m
rooting for you!
Rose
